


On The Frontline

by emmram



Series: By Your Side 'verse [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: By Your Side 'verse, Gen, season 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-31
Updated: 2013-01-31
Packaged: 2017-11-27 16:28:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/664062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmram/pseuds/emmram
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post 7.10. Sam and Dean have their own ways of dealing with death and grief. Lucifer observes and tries to help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On The Frontline

**Author's Note:**

> Fourth part in the By Your Side 'verse, aka the series where Sam and Hallucifer are BFFs and things are Angsty and Awkward.
> 
> SPOILERS through 7.11: Adventures in Babysitting. Mild swearing, weirdness, angst, present-tense, metaphor-abuse.

_**On The Frontline** _

It's been a week since they burnt Bobby's body.

Sometimes it feels like it's been longer than that. Between the two of them stewing in their own grief, the air thick with memory and unspoken words, and Sam trying to make sure that they didn't die of starvation ( _he knew how to move on, didn't he? Wasn't that his specialty?_ ), the week's felt more like a month. He's been here before, of course; grief has worn him through so many times that he welcomes it like an old friend, lets it burrow beneath his skin like it's been there all along ( _it's been there all along_ ).

Dean doesn't quite deal as well; he spends a lot of the time brooding, or drinking, shaking with barely restrained anger. If he talks at all, it's about Dick Roman, the numbers that Bobby had scrawled on Sam's palm, or _can you just shut up, Sam, I'm perfectly fine as I am_. Sometimes Sam feels like he's twenty-three again and trying to get Dean to open up about Dad, but their wounds run much, much deeper this time, and Sam stops trying much, much quicker. They barely talk to each other through the week.

Of course, that doesn't mean it's _quiet_.

"Frankly, Sam," Lucifer tells him, "this is getting _boring_. I mean, sure—you two wouldn't be as much to play with if your lives _weren't_ crap, but sitting around, waiting for the next tragedy?" He shakes his head. "This isn't _like_ you, Sam." He smiles, sidles closer. "Sammy, the go-getter. Sammy, the over-achiever. Aren't you _itching_ to _do_ something?"

"Please." Sam digs his nail into his palm, more out of force of habit than anything else. Dean's out, researching or getting wasted (he's not sure that there's a difference now), but that doesn't really mean Sam gets a free pass on breaking apart. "Please, not now. I can't."

Lucifer raises an eyebrow. "Can't what? Can't be what you really are? Can't get off your ass and actually _save_ the ones you love instead of watching them die?"

Sam grits his teeth. "I'm _trying_."

"Sure you are." Lucifer laughs, and the sound echoes eerily in the cabin. "Remember how wonderful it felt to be a hundred percent sure of what you were doing? To know that you were _making a change_? Even in those last few decades in the Cage, when I laid you out bare—all you had was gratitude, and love, and _accomplishment_. Stop denying yourself, Sam."

Sam shudders. He remembers—the heady power of the demon blood; being torn apart and rebuilt so many times in the Cage that he didn't know where he started and Lucifer ended; thinking _i did this i did this i did this i saved them all_ and that that was all that mattered—

"I'm not doing that again," Sam says with more conviction than he feels. "I know better now. Revenge isn't always the best answer."

Lucifer's smile widens and he leans in closer. "Oh, but don't you remember, Sam?" he says. "This isn't revenge—it's _redemption_."

* * *

  
Dean doesn't sleep much outside of passing out after too much booze. Sam can understand being afraid of your own dreams, so he doesn't push it. He makes sure that he gets Dean to bed whenever he finds his brother slumped in front of the laptop, or passed out on the floor, raising little puffs of dust with his snoring. He places the trashcan strategically by Dean's bedside, gets him coffee and pills for the inevitable hangover (which Dean just pushes aside in favour of more booze—"that's a hell of a better cure for a hangover," as he puts it), and tries to be as much of a conscientious brother as he can without actually addressing the main problem.

Lucifer finds all of it ridiculous, of course. "The way you two are dancing around each other, I'm surprised neither of you have tripped over the gigantic elephant in the room already."

Sam can't help it; he smirks. "That just sounded _weird_."

Lucifer winks at him, and Sam ( _he shouldn't, he shouldn't_ ) feels a bit of warmth bloom in his chest. He turns away, inexplicably shy.

It comes as something of a surprise when Sam finds that not only is _he_ able to sleep, but that he dreams of beautiful things—of hope, of salvation, where he's not the one shrinking into the corner with nothing but a can of cleaning fluid, but the one standing tall, rending Dick Roman into tiny pieces, opening up a gate to the darkest pits of Hell ( _because he_ _ **can**_ _, because he's always meant to be a key to the netherworlds_ ), and banishing the Leviathan. Bobby and Dean are watching him, caught somewhere between awe and fear and sadness, but they're _alive_ and whole, and it's because of him, because of him, _because of him_ —

He doesn't wake covered in cold sweat, breathing short and fast and painful. He only feels a deep satisfaction, power thrumming somewhere deep within his body, as if some of the dream leaked into reality. He spends a few minutes every morning revelling in the feeling as Lucifer smiles at him fondly.

Perhaps this is why he is forever scrambling to make up for what he _is_ , what he's done—a broken childhood, Dad's death, Dean's death, taking demon blood, releasing Lucifer, dying, spending two centuries in the Cage while his soulless body committed atrocity upon atrocity—there is no end to what he must atone for.

Perhaps he does not even want to see the end.

Perhaps all that matters is that he has a purpose, and that nothing, not even beings as old as Creation itself, can stop him.

* * *

  
Sam stares long and hard at the coffee mug on the kitchen table. He imagines it lifting into the air, going in circles above the table, before knocking gently against Dean's head so that he would stop frowning at the laptop for once and actually _talk_.

The mug, predictably, doesn't move.

Sam rubs his throbbing temples and sighs. This was so much easier when he thought Lucifer was doing it.

Lucifer settles on the table, idly swinging his legs back and forth. "That's because you weren't quite sure if you were in the Cage back then. It's a little easier to explain away strange stuff in a metaphysical realm."

"I _was_ sure of where I was," Sam tells him without thinking.

Dean's head snaps up. Sam stares back at him, trying to look as innocent as possible. "Coffee?" he asks, lifting the mug.

Dean narrows his eyes, but eventually nods and returns to the laptop. "Make it Irish," he says.

"But of course," Sam mutters, rising to his feet. Lucifer follows him to the counter, footsteps so loud against the floor that Sam finds himself cringing and wondering how Dean doesn't _hear_. "Oh, but you _weren't_ ," Lucifer says. "You were so ready to believe and trust in me again—it was a little precious, really, reminded me of all the glorious times we had together—that you had no problem being yourself. Haven't I always told you, Sam, that _I_ have always been your ultimate purpose? That we were—in so many, many different ways—made for each other?"

Sam grits his teeth. "What is your point," he bites out, as quietly as he can.

"My point is, Sam, you don't have to believe that reality is one thing or the other." He smiles. "You can be in the Cage, and out of it, at the same time."

Sam shakes his head. "That doesn't make any sense," he mutters.

Lucifer shrugs. "Does anything? Stop trying to file the stuff in your head into neat boxes, Sam. Accept what you see. Maybe then you'll find the peace you're looking for."

"And power," Sam says, almost absentmindedly.

Lucifer's grin can only be described as shit-eating. "Yes," he says. "And power."

* * *

  
Sam is glad they're finally moving forward—instead of spinning around the same issues, over and over again.

Dean's insistent on getting to Frank, of course. Sam wants to go just as bad, but the call from the little girl changes things. She's obviously in urgent need of help, while getting through Frank's many layers of paranoia and bullshit to whatever truth he may have uncovered will take time that she may not have.

They decide to split up, and Sam feels rather proud of himself ( _redemption not revenge redemption not revenge_ is all he thinks about, all he thinks about). Just before he leaves to start packing, however, Dean waves his empty beer bottle at him and says, "Thanks for finishing all my beer."

"I didn't touch your beer. Mine's right there," Sam says, gesturing to the untouched bottle on the table. "You probably drank it without noticing." He wouldn't exactly put that past his brother at this point.

Dean doesn't look entirely convinced, but sets the bottle down. Sam leaves the room, but can't help a sliver of unease from travelling down his spine. He hesitates for a couple of seconds, then enters the room again.

Dean's not there, but Lucifer's holding the empty bottle now. "You need to buy better alcohol," Lucifer tells him in all seriousness. "This stuff tastes terrible." And he grins.

Sam stares and stares and stares and then he can't help but laugh a little. Just a little.

_**Finis** _


End file.
